Over the last few months, we’ve published a number of Extension Development Kit (EDK) blog posts and tutorials to help you develop extensions for both the Timescape social network app and the Music player in our Xperia™ smartphones. Now we’ve got another update for you – EDK 2.0 – and it includes an updated Timescape™ API that enables you to incorporate Facebook™-like actions (such as “liking” or commenting) for the users of the external apps you create for Timescape™. We’ve also included an emulator for Smart Extras for your convenience. Read on for more details and to download EDK 2.0.

Today we release an Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) beta ROM, as a follow up to the previously released ICS alpha ROM. In line with our goal to support the open developer community, we want to give you the chance to try out our coming upgrade to ICS (Android™ 4.0) in this beta version.

While the ICS alpha ROM was an early preview, the ICS beta ROM have passed some certifications such as Modem type approval, and important functions like FM radio and GSM are turned on. However, additional certification and approval is needed before an official upgrade can be released. As previously communicated, we will upgrade all 2011 Xperia™ smartphones running on Android to ICS. Read more to find out what’s included in the beta ROM, and what other limitations apply.

As you can see, we have now started the process of upgrading the Developer World website. Yesterday we got new colours and styling, and going forward we’ll be looking at bigger improvements in the design and functionality of the site. Read on to find out more, and to learn why you might see some extensive use of animated retro gifs saying “Under construction”.

Are you a developer bound for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week? If that’s the case, then make sure you stop by the Sony (Hall 6 – 6E01) booth and the Google (Hall 8 – 8C25) booth. At the Sony booth, you’ll be able to interface with business managers, developers and marketing managers. At the Google booth, you’ll be able to meet with the Developer World team and discuss partnerships, technical issues or our latest developer activities. At both locations, you can view demos, get hands-on with the latest in Sony technology, and see connected screens in action.

At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona later this month we at the Developer Program will host an exclusive VIP partner and developer event at the Sony booth on the 27th of February. This is a closed event with limited seats. However, we’ve kept 10 spots open for community developers following our developer blog and here’s your chance to try to grab one of those spots. Read more after the jump for instructions on how to apply.

Continuing our open innovation initiative, we are now making the sensor HAL for the 2011 Xperia™ phones available as open source. So if you’re an advanced developer, you will now be able to access and configure the sensors of a 2011 Xperia™ phone on a deeper level. For example, you will be allowed to optimise the way the compass is used in a custom ROM.

In the good feedback we received on our previous open initiatives, we have seen a lot of requests for us to open source these files. And now, we’re happy to provide that opportunity. This is not part of open source archives that we are required to publish, it simply something we want to do for the community.

If you’re an advanced Android™ developer in search of keyboard mapping information in order to make a custom ROM for your Xperia™ pro or Xperia™ mini pro, look no further. In this post, we‘ve listed the keyboard variants for our most recent Xperia™ devices that have keyboards, which will help you create customised ROMs that can handle keyboards with country-specific characters, such as the cedilla in Portugal or stroke keys for Hanzi characters in China. Read more after the jump.

Are you having problems getting under the current 50 MB upload limit imposed by Android Market™? Don’t let it be a roadblock in preparing your Android™ app for market. Instead, use these excellent tips for reducing the file size of your APK. David Karlsson, a software architect at Sony Ericsson, will get you all the details. Read more after the jump.

As part of our continuing efforts towards openness and knowledge sharing, we are now stepping up our open source activities. For a long time, we have been one of the major contributors to the Android Open Source Project. We’ve also been active in the open developer community where we most notably published an ICS alpha release a couple of months ago. And now, we’re excited to release a couple of new open source projects that are available on our GitHub. As you can see below, we have just now released two very interesting projects as open source: the analysis tool ChkBugReport, and our WebGL implementation for Android™ 4.0.

This way, we would like to continue to be transparent, share our knowledge, and get external developer contributions to make the tools even better. On our GitHub, you can also find our Web SDK project we published a while back, and a project called DrmLicenseService, which we will tell more about soon. Stay tuned for more information about open source projects going forward!

In November, we announced that we were the first phone manufacturer in the world to support WebGL in the native Android web browser on Xperia™ phones. As a next step, we are now very excited to release our WebGL implementation for our coming Xperia™ phones running Android™ 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and above as open source. Read more after the jump, as Anders Edenbrandt, Senior Software Architect, explains more!